The Experience of Medical Scribing: No Disparities Identified

Abstract

Introduction

The chronic failure to significantly increase the number of underrepresented minorities (URM) in medicine requires that we look for new mechanisms for channelling URM students through pre-medical education and into medical school. One potential mechanism is medical scribing, which involves a person helping a physician engage in real-time documentation in the electronic medical record.

Methods

As a precursor to evaluating this mechanism, this survey pilot study explored individuals’ experiences working as a medical scribe to look for any differences related to URM status. Of 248 scribes, 159 (64% response rate) completed an online survey. The survey was comprised of 11 items: demographics (4 items), role and length of time spent as a scribe (2 items), and experience working as a scribe (5 items).

Results

The vast majority (>80%) of participants reported that working as a medical scribe gave them useful insight into being a clinician, provided valuable mentoring, and reinforced their commitment to pursue a career in medicine. The experiences reported by scribes who identified as URM did not differ from those reported by their majority counterparts.

Discussion

It remains to be seen whether medical scribing can serve as an effective pipeline for URM individuals to matriculate into medical school. But the present findings suggest that the experience of working as a medical scribe is a positive one for URM.

Keywords:

• medical scribing
• under-represented minorities
• URMM
• medical school
• pipeline

Ethics Approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. This study was determined to be exempt from formal IRB review by the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (ID: 00015875)

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to ScribeAmerica for their collaboration.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work. We have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. ScribeAmerica played no role in conceptualizing this study, analyzing the data, or preparing this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received for conducting this study or preparing this manuscript.